


Seen Your Face Like a Heart Attack

by augustskies



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Hurt, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 12:16:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17528543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/augustskies/pseuds/augustskies
Summary: Love letters from Adam Parrish to his soulmate.





	Seen Your Face Like a Heart Attack

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from Me by the 1975.

Adam Parrish didn't believe in soulmates.

When he was seven, he remembered sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest on Gansey's bed, quietly observing the way his best friend's eyes lit up as he animatedly told Adam about the discovery he'd made that day.

" Soulmates, " Gansey had declared gravely.

" Have you heard of them, Adam ? Apparently everyone has one. They're supposed to complete us in a way nothing else can. Sort of like the last piece to a puzzle, I think. We probably haven't met ours yet, but we'll _know_ when we do. And it'll be more of an adventure than anything else in the world. "

He said all of it in one breath, cheeks flushed and looking proud as he shared his newfound knowledge with Adam.

Adam had been slightly less enthusiastic and a little more cynical.

" Soulmates, " he'd repeated. " But why do we need someone else to complete us anyways ? Why can't we be whole without another person ? "

Gansey had bit his bottom lip as he'd appeared to consider the question very seriously.

" I guess it's because things are different when you're in love ? "

And there it was.

With just one word, Adam could feel something uncomfortable tugging at the pit of his stomach.

He'd wanted to ask Gansey, how the word seemed to roll off his tongue with so much unpracticed ease.

Whenever Adam thought about _love_ , he felt not loss, but rather something lacking in his chest.

The void terrified him sometimes.

He'd wanted to ask Gansey, how could he be so certain about such an intangible idea ?

By the time Gansey had started talking in earnest about soulmates being the anchor to each other during the worst thunderstorms, Adam had mostly tuned him out.

He'd thought of his parents — thought of red rimmed eyes and shadows which never landed where you expected them to.

He had seen the tattoos.

The tiny, almost imperceptible Latin word etched on his mother's wrist in dark blue ink, as well as the matching mark just below his father's ankle.

It meant they were soulmates. It meant they had completed each other, once. Had been in love.

 _It is God's way,_ the preacher reminded them tirelessly in every Sunday sermon during which the entirety of their small town was packed neatly into ancient pews.

_He has chosen the two of you for one another for a reason. It is the holiest love which is meant to be on earth, in this life._

Some days, Adam still looked for absolution in his mother's eyes or holiness in his father's fist, and it killed him a little every time he found that terrible nothingness instead.

He understood that love required falling.

Whether you were falling in or out of love, there would always be a long way down to go.

* * *

 

On the worst nights, he writes.

Hours before he has to get up for his paper delivery before school, he sits in front of the makeshift plastic desk and writes letters to his soulmate.

They are not love letters, and he doesn't know who to address them to, but he writes them anyways.

He writes about each of his friends, in great detail.

He writes about the light in Gansey's eyes whenever he talks about his fanatic obsessions — a light which has somehow managed to remind Adam time after time that _he is alive_ , a light he thinks he would follow to the edge of the world.

He writes about Blue's fierce and uncompromising, one of a kind brand of friendship he's learned to appreciate. The steel behind her kindness and the strength behind her smile.

He writes about the way Noah keeps the five of them together in a way so that they are greater than the sum of each. The way his presence is heartbreaking and magical all at the same time.

He writes about Ronan. The dreamer with the sharp edged grin who he thinks may understand him better than anyone else sometimes. He writes about learning to fight without meaning to suffocate.

He writes about the five of them in a booth at Nino's after school, arguing and planning the future and throwing straw wrappers at each other.

He writes about Cabeswater and Glendower and the women of 300 Fox Way.

He writes about ley lines and scrying and the time Ronan threw Noah out of the window.

He writes about the time Gansey was almost killed by a fucking bee.

He writes about Blue and Gansey and the identical crown shaped tattoo they discover on their forearms after their first kiss.

He writes about being at the Barns with Ronan, sitting side by side on the porch and passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth until the stars blurred and he wasn't sure if they kissed or dreamed or lived all at once.

He writes about losing his hearing in his left ear, and feeling like the world has gotten dangerously smaller.

He writes and writes and writes.

Mostly, he just writes about the life of Adam Parrish.

The letters pile up under his mattress, unsent.

* * *

 

In October, as he prepares for his college applications, he has a suspicion as to who his soulmate might be.

* * *

 

By November, he  _knows._

* * *

He loads three cardboard boxes into the back of the battered Hondayota in December.

Both Ronan and Gansey offer to help him move into the dorms at Harvard, but he declines them both for different reasons.

In the car, he listens to a mixtape which tightens his chest in a strange way.

He decides to mail the letters a week later.

* * *

 

It's December twenty first when Gansey receives the call.

He's sitting at the kitchen table across from Blue, drinking hot chocolate, when his phone rings.

The call lasts for almost five minutes.

By the time he hangs up, face stricken and fumbling for jacket and shoes, Blue demanding to know _what the hell was that about,_ they're both halfway in the Camaro already and Gansey is thrusting his phone at Blue while saying _call Ronan, call him now, please-_

The car won't start.

Gansey tries, again and again until his fist comes down over the steering wheel and his hands are shaking.

And then he's holding Blue while they're both somehow crying. 

* * *

 

Adam Parrish didn't believe in soulmates.

He thought of the letters holding so much of him in a cold, metal mailbox somewhere, and tried to blink through the haziness.

_Dear Ronan,_

All of his letters began that way.

In that moment, he _wanted_ so much. He wanted to say things like, _I'm sorry._

Ronan would say, _whatever the fuck are you sorry for ?_

_For not telling you sooner. For believing too little and too late._

In another lifetime, he knew, he wouldn't be lying on the sidewalk in front of his old house with eleven cracked ribs and his insides bleeding out slowly. He could hear the sirens in the distance, could hear raised voices all around him, but the darkness was closing in too fast for him to fight off.

He did not believe in soulmates, but Adam Parrish did, however, believe in love.

He remembered, _and it'll be more of an adventure than anything else in the world._

He thought, maybe the falling was the adventure all along. 

* * *

 

Ronan Lynch hadn't dreamt in years.

He would sometimes sit bolt upright in the middle of the night, trembling and gasping a name which almost hurt more than the emptiness around him. Next to his bed, the letters he reached for so often gradually begin to crinkle and yellow with age, as does he.

When finally, one day, he dreams again, he dreams of eyes the color of his heartbreak and the smile he once would have set the world on fire for.

When he sees _him,_ really sees Adam Parrish again, he finds himself thinking, in spite of it all, that maybe they'll finally be alright after everything.

**Author's Note:**

> So as one does, I wrote this at an ungodly hour last night instead of sleeping. (I've been reading a bunch of pynch fics lately and I was sad, don't @ me.) I don't actually know if any of it makes sense but I really hope it does ? I'm sorry for any mistakes I may have made, also, if you're emo trash for Adam Parrish like I am, fear not, remember none of this is canon ! The boys are currently alive and well and happy and together and the dreamers trilogy may or may not be coming out later this year !


End file.
